It’s silly to gripe about someone watching a movie for so long, but not because the person watching needs something to fill their life. If that was the only justification needed you could justify owning a yacht because it’s the only place you could get away.
The real argument is that running a television is not very energy intensive, and being on the grid means the energy it does use is produced at a scale where the environmental impact is drastically reduced.
I’ve had to reread your second to last paragraph multiple times because it just feels bonkers to go from saying that people enjoy television to saying people might kill themselves without it. What basis does that have in reality? I tried looking into it a little and the only search results regarding suicide and lack of tv discussed suicide coverage on tv and whether it increased suicides. Searching for whether people are happier without tv had a lot of anecdotal “yes” articles and articles relating to a study about teens being happier with less screen time. That seems fairly inconclusive and may just mean there’s a gap in the research that could be filled, but I think you’re really underestimating the average person’s ability to live without television.
This is partly true. While upvoting has some effect, boosting (at least on Kbin) has a much greater effect on sorting. For example, no comments were boosted on this thread, with Omgarm’s 12 upvote comment below 1984’s 42 upvote comment when using hot sorting. I boosted Omgarm’s comment and it is now at the top of the page despite have less than half the upvotes.